a poem by Fiona Sheehan

Spilling down his back a row of eyes.

From his perch he jumps lightly down.

An iron breeze rustles his green hair,

The miniscule veins of blood gleam in his eye

A dangerous ruby red; the liquid beauty.

The tail turns, a cache of jewels is revealed

In the sack of an unrepentant thief;

The dance of colors softens every thread.

A molten sun is poured across the yard,

Lighting a thousand emerald candle flames.

The hens look away, as two obsidian eyes

Approach with more demands than questions.

The red-breasted robin turns a dull grey

And scurries away before the god of birds.

The curve of this throat steals the intrigue of night;

His numerous eyes keep a watchful control

Over the brown maidens, subtly there.

Maybe their creator was blind to the color of power-

Or maybe they are steeped in the earthen force of their sex.

Night spreads across the peacock’s fiefdom.

A sign reads: Please don’t scare the birds.

God and Windshield / Arthur Solway

At her age, she says, life is like a train. Sometimes the ride is

     nice.

Sometimes there are stops we wish we didn’t have to make.

Spoken like one sitting casually beneath Buddha’s tree

down by the banks of the Ohio. What do I know? I was a child

and she looking as if she just stepped from a painting by Alex Katz—

Hermès scarf, sunglasses, shades of Jackie O.

Into the convertible we’d go, taking the camel humped hills

sending one’s stomach to one’s throat. She’d make the accelerated

     curve,

punch the gas, swerve the contours of careless laughter.

The car radio blaring against God and windshield

the jazz she so adores—Miles, Coltrane, Parker—from a barge

docked off the Kentucky side. “Radio Free Newport, Home of the Jazz Ark.”

Leo Underhill, the announcer, she’d insist was drunk by 10 a.m.,

while Eddie—you are the soul who snaps my control—Jefferson

crooning, There I go, there I go, there I go again…

Blacksmithery / Alx Johns

The ax's head now

half submerged

and making its home

in earth and moss,

he's long forgotten

the felling

or needing the fire

that one imagined would

melt a spearhead,

its place a waste

of space now.

Then, though, back when

a dark shaft above

a pair of round wooden wheels

would shout a solid ball, a better,

a man made stone out into

a rock wall.

The sleek, smaller cannons

for each man,

are buried now in

Iwo Jima's volcanic sand.

A silver cylinder

of melted metals,

that primordial, essential glowing

flowing stuff

poured, pounded to its purpose

married to others

by fire

and capped

with a capsule,

a domicile

rose into the sky

and beyond

as fire itself forged fire,

a rocket

went into

outer space,

men

fragile enough to

lift the staring head from one another

with an iron tool

could

actually fire

skulls to the moon and

stand in the ash grey

dust and rock

and look back now

on the little earth circle,

the land one color

the sea another,

and all else

ineffably black.

On Weeds and the Millefiori of an Idle Mind / Aralee Strange

If I were pulling weeds I wouldn’t be so antsy now

so full of doubt and need of what I do not know

If I were pulling weeds my fingers would command my eyes

and find each greedy stalk and yank a path to clarity

Dirt is dirt

green is green

this is flower

this is weed

The world would slowly fade away and the broke mosaic of my brain

would come together at the task

This is flower

this is weed

I am them

they are me

I would hum the melody that scores my dreams and find

the words to calm the beast that slinks along beside me

Dirt is dirt

green is green

My thoughts would settle down in green and

lie there cool and damp and clean all day

But when I shirk my job and sit and brood upon the times and

what is yet undone and why we burn our crops and kill our young

all my fractured tableaux come unglued and shatter on the floor

where

dirt is not always dirt sometimes

it’s fake

green is just blue and yellow with maybe

a touch of red

some flowers are deadly

some weeds are flowers

angels are here if you want them to be

Trouble is here all the time

we carry him with us it’s how he gets around

ever since he lost his legs in some dirty little war

gets a free ride when he needs one just like any

other veteran

We are him

he is us

if I prayed give us grace who would I be talking to?

One scary mother doppelganger double talking to me

says

     I know you

says

     If you were pulling weeds you couldn’t hang around with me

     I am a million laughs you know but I am nature-free

     I have no truck with dirt and green they play too rough

     they do not see the difference between them and me

     my rules do not apply

says

     If you don’t mind I’ll catch a ride downtown

That’s where he stays he pays no rent he sleeps around

when he sleeps and hustles drinks and dope and sex

the patron saint of drunks and poets and black blues singers

says

     Put the pedal to the metal I’ve got a powerful thirst

And so of course a bar is first where everybody knows his name

and liquor’s cheap and flows so sweet around each word he says

and pretty soon here comes that glow that worms its way into

your heart and makes you think I’m happy now

     It’s happy hour

he spits

     another round?

So round and round and round we go and when we stop

nobody knows it’s happy hour nobody cares Trouble’s here

his voice a murmur low and warm crawling along the bar

We’re a family reunion we’re comrades in arms

he laughs at our jokes we admire his aplomb

ole roy and his posse singing old campfire songs

beneath a sky of black light blue

     Happy trails to you

     until

     we meet

     again

and the hands on the Rolling Rock clock tick around

Through the looking glass behind the bar

the other us

lost on the far side our lives in reverse

our faces morph a ghoulish frieze

I am them and they are me

(sober thought on a drunken spree)

disembodied bobbleheads blind dumb numb

is this noise home?

The air is sick with smoke and Trouble

one drink away from too many

says

     I loved a woman once

     wrapped myself around her like a kudzu vine

     until I couldn’t get loose

     Gave her begonias and forget-me-nots

     she laughed in my face

     Gave her the key to my heart

     you mean that bag of black ice in your chest?

     She touched my cheek and split

     I see her around every now and then

     she talks about her life

     we share a pot of tea

     I tell her I love her

     she says she loves me

     too

The barkeep pours out one last round and unless I miss my guess

from here on out it’s a hard fast slide down to a bad bad place

A careless word is all it takes who gives a fuck! I do you prick!

a punch is thrown the fight is on and pretty soon here come the cops

So if no one minds I’ll skip this round and pay my tab and vamanos

but

     Whoa! companera

     what can you be thinking

     the night is young and if I’m not wrong

     you’ve got the better part of a twenty left

     I know a place couple of blocks suit us to a T

     for every shot you pay for I get one shot for free

     so what do you say

     amigo?

Nothing down here is free I know that and so does he

and back on the street all I can see is not pulling weeds

is dangerous to my health not to mention my piggy bank

which hit the floor with all my marbles

So I’m counting every step and I'm stepping over cracks

full of poke weed rag weed dandelion and spotted spurge

all the green that works its way through asphalt in a season

and if I don’t watch out I’ll start asking why

why what

what you got?

Trouble on my back

says

     Seems you’re hankering to pull some weeds

     so just drop me off at Thirteenth and Main

     I’m much obliged

     Until again

Stumbling down these streets all the thousand flowers

scattered at my feet would never come together

Yesterday’s done now’s now and tomorrow’s a mystery

the tenacious vegetal pitch of my attention is focused on

Dirt is dirt

Green is green

This is flower

This is weed

I have to get down on my knees to find the picture.

Convenience / W.S. Merwin

We were not made in its image

but from the beginning we believed in it

not for the pure appeasement of hunger

but for its availability

it could command our devotion

beyond question and without our consent

and by whatever name we have called it

in its name love has been set aside

unmeasured time has been devoted to it

forests have been erased and rivers poisoned

and truth has been relegated for it

we believe that we have a right to it

even though it belongs to no one

we carry a way back to it everywhere

we are sure that it is saving something

we consider it our personal savior

all we have to pay for it is ourselves